Note: If you want to see the photos that go with this narrative, send me an e-mail at burnsidewm@cox.net and I'll send you a .pdf by e-mail that will include all the pictures (downsized to 500 pixels). Wm.Burnside
Freckles Road: Six Happy Years, 1963-69
Part One: 1963-65
After we brought Jon home from the hospital a few days after New Year’s 1964 we entered a particularly happy time of our lives and began thinking about the future. We lived on Freckles Road, a particularly appropriate name since all of our children had freckles and so did Minnie. I was teaching at a junior high school and also in the General Adult Division of Long Beach City College two evenings a week. And I had just completed my Master’s Degree at Long Beach State College. Jeannine and Billy were in a good neighborhood school within walking distance and Lolly (Cheryl) was soon to start kindergarten.
Minnie began thinking of what she would like to do in the future and of course talked with me about it. I asked her, “What would you really like to do if you had the opportunity?” And she told me what she had said a few years earlier, “I’ve always wanted to be a math teacher.”
“Then do it!” I told her. “How can I with 4 little children?” was her response. “I’ll help you with the children, you can work at it slowly a little at a time, and the Lord will open a way,” I told her.
Long Beach City College was just one mile from our home and they had a program which enabled young mothers to leave their child at an on-campus nursery while the mothers were in class. In exchange the mothers had to give some of their time working in the nursery. So I took Minnie to Long Beach City College and got her registered for two classes and Jon registered for nursery school. A little later we were able to get a second car but at first Minnie and Jon had to walk to the college. Jon was just a little guy and had to take three steps for every one his mother took, so to encourage him in walking that long mile, she would give him a little box of raisins “to give him energy” for the walk. That helped a lot. Here is a picture of Minnie and Jon walking onto the campus of Long Beach City College. This particular day Minnie had our station wagon that you can see in the background. Jon was carrying a heavy book for his Mom.
Our dear next-door-neighbor Maxine worked in the coffee bar so Minnie and Jon would often go there to get coffee and a roll. He explained how I could find them on campus if I ever needed to. “Just go where they sell coffee and you can find Mom,” he told me.
Long Beach City College was a stimulating intellectual and social outlet for Minnie and she enjoyed those years very much. And did very well, of course. She was always on the “Dean’s List” with high grades. Here’s how she described that experience in her journal: “When I decided to return to college, I knew Bill’s support and help would be the key to whether I would succeed. Bill totally supported my efforts and he was willing to take the children camping so I could study, type my papers, give me history lectures while I prepared dinner or help with housework so I could study.” “Since he was already teaching, his experiences helped me avoid some mistakes and to see that many things taught in the education courses were not realistic. He always encouraged me and felt that I would succeed. So my husband was my favorite mentor–and still is!!” J-58
Freckles Road in Lakewood, California, has special memories for all of our family. Both next-door-neighbors became close friends. Maxine and Jim
were especially close to our family. Maxine’s husband had died some years
earlier in a boating accident and Jimmy was her only child. He was 16 when we moved in and was very kind to all of our four little children. They went to the Methodist Church. A couple of years later Maxine married Pat and he, too, was very helpful and friendly with the children. Here is a special coffee time at her house next door.
Our next-door-neighbor on the other side was Mary Nell and Jay and their daughter Mida Ann. Mary Nell was a nurse who worked at the Veterans’ Hospital in Long Beach and was always particularly good with Billy and Jon.
This picture is of Jon's 4th birthday December 26, 1964 and the cake his Mom made for him, as always! Other neighbors were also friendly. The Dermodys had a beautiful avocado tree and didn’t like avocados! So they kept us supplied with all the avocados we could use.
We were only a dozen or so blocks from our best friends, John and Lavonne Brown and their four children who were just about the same age as ours, just a little older. They frequently came to our home and we went to theirs and maintained their friendship through all the years. Many years later when Lavonne died, we went of course to be with the family. I remember that Minnie made them a very big pot of chicken and dumplings which cheered them all.
John and Lavonne went to the same church that we did, Bethany Baptist Church in Long Beach. It was a Conservative Baptist Church and we were members there for most of the time we were in California. At first we
were in the Young Married Class, “The Twigbenders” and later I taught an adult Sunday School Class and Minnie worked in the nursery and was a cradle roll visitor. That was quite an interesting assignment for her. While the other children were in school, she and Jon would go visit young mothers who had brought their children to our nursery at church. She would give them helpful literature and talk to them about any of their problems and pray with them. Jon was always so well-behaved in those visits and Minnie was very proud of him.
She also remembered very well the “Mothers’ Bible Class” one morning a week at church. Some of the older ladies babysat the children so the young mothers could attend an excellent verse-by-verse Bible class, taught by Phyllis Larson. Our children also sang in the childrens’ choir and we particularly remember the Christmas and Easter programs they participated in. Unknown to us then was the fact that the director of the Children’s Choir at Bethany, Sophie Stokke, was the daughter of the founder of Christ’s College in Taipei, James Graham. We had no idea at the time that we would both end up teaching there for three years after we retired.
Each day when the children got home from school, Minnie and Jon, of course, had returned from Long Beach City College and it was a happy time of the day, telling their Mom all the day’s happenings and then playing outside most of the time since southern California has such a mild climate. Minnie always fixed a nice evening meal and we all enjoyed the conversation at the dinner table. We had a simple rule that we would only have pleasant conversation around the table. If there were problems or “issues” to discuss that could be done at an earlier time. After dinner we had the family Bible study time and then the children helped with the dishes and other chores and then played until bed time. In a talk to a lady’s group many years later Minnie told of how significant Bible reading and study always was in our family: “. . . So the pattern from the time I met Bill of our relationship together was very much centered around the Lord.
“And when we had children we discussed this. We said, “OK, we need to have family worship.” Now in the very early days we read the Bible story book. And we sang the little songs like “Jesus Loves Me.” But as they learned to read, then it was the real Bible and we found in our family that as soon as we finished dinner–because we had them all together–and we always sat down and ate our evening meal together, we would have our family worship and those were rich times in our family. The kids memorized scriptures. Oh, we just did lots and lots of things. And that went on until they were gone.” (Verbatim comments in Minnie’s talk on “Worship” at Sequim Bible Church, Sequim, WA October 9, 2003)
So many of our activities centered around our home and neighborhood. But we also frequently invited people for dinner. Minnie was “given to hospitality,” as scripture enjoins and we all enjoyed our frequent guests. Many years later Minnie wrote in her little book, “Breaking Bread Together,” “Involve your children in helping to serve others. When they are old enough to help, let each one know how they can serve the Lord by helping. When a family reaches out to others in hospitality, everyone in the family can be involved. I remember how my children loved to help make plans, arrange the table, make centerpieces and place cards. They also loved hearing and participating in the conversations around the table. Since my husband was a college professor, we had many visiting speakers stay in our home. We learned so much from them.” (pp. 6-7)
Of course we had visitors from our family as well. In 1962 Biggie came to California on the train and brought Pat's daughter Vanessa Kay with her. Of course we all still remember that visit and our trip to Disneyland.
Bob and Bernice and Kenny and Mike came that same summer and we went to the San Diego Zoo with them.
We set aside for vacations the extra money that came in from teaching in the evening so every summer we took vacations in California or went home to Texas so Minnie could see her mother and the rest of her family. Every spring break we went to the zoo in San Diego and in the summers we went to Yosemite, Idylwild, Sequoia, Pacific Grove, and other places. Once we took a boat trip to Catalina Island.
Minnie was a busy mother! She helped with the Cradle Roll visitation and sometimes went with me on our regular church visitation night. She helped in the nursery and taught a pre-school class and she also helped with the City College pre-school. And she was room mother sometimes at the children’s school. And you can see her in this very cute picture as a den mother when Billy was a cub scout. Later in life as an adult he became a leader in the scouts himself.
In the midst of all her activities, Minnie made all of the girls’ clothes and hers, and even some of the boys’ little clothes. And she even made matching wardrobes for the girls’ Barbie dolls! She told me casually one day while she was busily stitching tiny little parts of the doll dresses that it was more work to make the doll clothes than the larger dresses for the girls. But that didn’t keep her from doing it! When I saw how many she was making I made them a little wooden wardrobe and we used tiny little hangars to hang them. We still have a few of the dresses left, handed down through the years.
How did she do all those things? Well, she had an unusual energy and efficiency in all the things she did. She loved the children and her family and enjoyed sewing and cooking and talking with all of us. The Lord had given her an amazing energy and ability and she recognized that it all came from Him. And she responded with diligence and cheerfulness. She not only loved her children, she loved being a mother (and a wife! ^-~). Many years later she wrote, “As a mother, I wanted to take good care of my family. Cooking for them, sewing special outfits and celebrating holidays was a big part of my life.” J-167 And elsewhere she wrote, ““I always loved to prepare family meals and special food they liked. I love being a mother - I also sewed for them -. “ J-103 [Emphasis added.]
Holidays and birthdays were always special and Minnie treated them as such. Of course she always made birthday cakes and here is Valentine’s Day, 1962 when Minnie made me a heart-shaped Valentine’s cake and I bought each of the children a small Valentine’s box of chocolates and Minnie a full-size box. Here is a picture showing that day.
Christmas was our family's favorite holiday especially because of what the birth of Jesus and the incarnation meant to us personally. Minnie did a lot to make it special with the decorations and Christmas baking, especially stollen (German Christmas bread). And she always sewed for Christmas. She made Christmas stockings for everyone in the family and dresses for the girls and vests for the boys. Here in 1962 are the children in the Christmas outfits their mother made for them. The vests were all in red.
Minnie came up with the idea that to encourage the children to read we should keep a little notebook to show what they read and the books we read together. When one of the children had read 100 books she made him or her a special “100-book cake” to celebrate the occasion. Here are Jeannine, Cheryl and Jonathan with their 100 book cakes - they were all just 8 years old! And Timothy with his 250 book cake at 9! And before we left California Jeannine had read 500 books so here is her special celebration in April, 1968.
Billy was born on Jeannine’s first birthday so, of course, they always celebrated their birthdays together. Here is a picture from May 24, 1965, Jeannine’s 8th birthday and Billy’s 7th. Another Happy Birthday celebration 1965 Bill's 32nd birthday—shown on the cake. That's Mary Bailey and David and Susan with her. Notice the happy look on Minnie's face. She always loved doing things special for me or the children.
Jon’s birthday was the day after Christmas so we celebrated his with Lolly’s on July 27th each year. This picture was taken July 27, 1969 after we had already moved to Arkansas.
When we lived on Freckles Road, we got a dog for the children. Minnie wrote about her in her journal: “I never wanted pets, but the children wanted a dog. I remember the day we got Tippy. Jeannine wrapped her in her coat for the ride home. I think all four children were in the very back of the station wagon with Tippy.” Jeannine added, “The day we got Tippy, she curled up on my coat and slept in the car on the way home... I was 6 and remember it clearly.”
“Tippy won me over with her sweet personality and her wagging tail with the white tip on the end. She was a great playmate for our four children—and she was very smart as well. If the children left the gate open, Tippy would wait on the front porch. She never left our property.” J-94 Here is a picture taken in 1969 of Tippy and her puppies with Maxine, Minnie, and Jeannine.
Freckles Road was an unusually friendly neighborhood. When the Helms Bakery truck came down our street, door opened and children came out with their mothers to buy “don-nies” and Minnie always bought rye bread for me and sought to perfect her bread recipe. (More on that later.) The mothers sat on the porch visiting while the children played and ate their “don-nies.”
Here are some small pictures that show the children at play and also how they helped with the chores. The girls are packing lunches for school and Billy and Lolly are painting the back fence. (I think I had just read Tom Sawyer to them in our family daily book reading.)
Billy and Jon reading in the library, May 1966. This was a weekly favorite for all the children.
Minnie often let the children help her in the kitchen and taught them many things about cooking and baking. As adults they all cook and bake in their own homes very often. Here they are decorating Christmas cookies. Holidays were always so much fun and everyone entered into the spirit of the season.
Music. Our whole family loved music and I often played classical music, Christian music, and occasionally ethnic folk music. The children sang in the children's choir at church, but neither Minnie nor I had a singing voice. Here's Jeannine playing her piano. She was quite talented and played for several years for her own enjoyment and for ours. Many years later she had to give it up because of the pressing duties of her family and career. Cheryl played the saxophone. Jon is the only one of the children who pursued a musical career and has owned his own Recording Studio in several places, including Australia. He is largely self-taught as a producer (and won the Australia Aria award!) and is quite proficient on the guitar. When Jeannine retires, I'm sure she will renew her interest in the piano for her own enjoyment and her family's. Her husband does quite well on the mandolin also.
With the mild climate of southern California we often took the children to the park or to the beach, but even more often we had picnics in our own backyard—sometimes for our family and often for friends. The little girl with Lolly was her best friend Leslie.
The back yard was also wonderful for birthday celebrations, especially when we decided to have a pinata for the children. That was always fun and the kids loved it.
Special time outs once a month. One of the favorite family activities was for Minnie and me to take one child once a month out to dinner at a very nice restaurant. (We had a 2-for-1 restaurant book that made the cost reasonable.) The child whose turn it was could choose which restaurant (in the book) to go to. They enjoyed the food and the special attention and we enjoyed the relaxed quiet time together and talked a lot with the children.
The three left at home looked forward to that time as well because either Marcella or Kathy Brown babysat and we always had special treats for them and they loved playing with the girls.
Jeannine remembers the time outs very well, “the fun of being the only kid to be dressing up along with Mom and Dad, and getting to choose the place. I remember choosing the Reuben E Lee (a sea food restaurant on a boat in the harbor at Newport Beach. I loved being on the water and especially their clam chowder soup. I remember one rare occasion when Jonathan and I combined our time-outs because we both wanted to go to the Reuben E Lee and we thought it would be fun to go together. It was.”
Beginning in about 1966 or 1967 Minnie did "after school care" for Jeannine's best friend, Mary Bennett. Minnie and Doris, Mary's mom, became very good friends, and Mary became our "5th child," as Minnie called her. When we moved to Arkansas in 1969, Mary flew out several summers during Junior and Senior High School to visit for a month at a time, bringing her gold fish and sewing machine so that she and Jeannine could make their school clothes and work on them at the same time. She ended up going to JBU and being both Cheryl and Jeannine's roommate, and now she lives in Denver and she and Jeannine are still very close.
She and her husband adopted two sweet little Chinese girls as babies and brought them up in Colorado. Here is a picture of Mary and Jeannine when they were students at JBU in 1977. The other picture is of her two daughters, Allison and Lauren with Papaw Christmas season 2010.
Perspective. The six years on Freckles Road were good years and a time of special happiness for all six of us. You can see it in the faces of the children and they way they enjoyed life. You can also see it in the pictures of Minnie, like this one, taken in 1964, age 27.
1965 was our 10th Anniversary year so here is our anniversary picture and the picture of the children God blessed us with during those first ten years of marriage.
Family picture taken on our 10th Anniversary 1965 Ages 4,6,7,8, > 28,32
Minnie was happy all her life in spite of many hardships and difficulties. She was cheerful and content and enthusiastic and worked hard all her life. Whatever the challenge was she sought to deal with it with a willing heart and a cheerful spirit. After our various discussions in 1963 when she sought to persuade me that it was a mistake to move to Dallas with the responsibility of the four small children and the disruption of their lives from what it had always been with their mother taking care of them, she obviously didn't want to find a job and work and leave them in a day-care center. But when I was determined to make the move “for one year” she tried to put the best face on things and be cheerful at least for the sake of the children. And when I put it to the test and through an inner struggle of my own finally realized that it was a mistake, I then tried to put life back together somewhat as it had been before the move. And God in His providence enabled me to return to my same position in the Long Beach School District—except that it was a better place to work since I began teaching in Belmont Shore with a higher I.Q. student body that was more motivated to work and learn. And I was also able to resume my part-time teaching in the Adult Division of Long Beach City College.
So it helps our perspective to realize that it was when we returned from my mistaken brief pilgrimage to Dallas that we moved to Freckles Road. We bought the house but it took God’s compassion for us and the compassion and trust of the real estate agent who sold it to us to take a promissory note for her commission that enabled us to buy the property. And it was compassion for my wife and four children that brought us back on track when I realized how unnecessarily difficult I was making life for her and for them. Not that I loved them more than the Lord, but that I loved them more than just thinking about myself and what I wanted to do. You can imagine how it affects me to read the words of my wife, written 44 years later in
her journal in response to a question of who she thinks of when she thinks of compassion. She wrote, “My dear husband, Bill! Sometimes I think our Lord would describe him in the same way he described David, 'A man after my heart.'--” “From the time I met Bill when I was 18 years old, I have been pleased with his deep desire to serve the Lord. Being into God's word daily is as important to him as eating the good meals I prepare for him.” “I have seen his heart of compassion with his children, grandchildren and great
grandchildren as with scores of his students and other people God has brought into our lives.” “The Bible says that the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, so Bill would be first to say that all praise and glory belongs to the Lord.” J-112
You can understand how strongly that motivates me to live up to her expectations as well as to the Lord's. Suffice it to say that the Lord enabled me to re-trace my steps after a mistaken decision. It is seldom that one is able to do that. Usually you have to live with your decisions, the bad ones as well as the good ones. And the Lord brought a lot of happiness into those six years on Freckles Road and gave me an adult Sunday School class to teach and a lot of good friends for us to have as a couple.
Minnie was already very hospitable but it was during those years she was able to use and develop those gifts even more. She wrote about it like this:
“Inviting people over for a meal was a great way to get to know and enjoy people. Our children liked having guests – and they entered into the occasions.”
“We also had small group home Bible studies from time to time.”
“Another thing we would do was invite friends for an evening of bridge. We would try to have 3 tables and that was fun.” J-108 It was fun, but we also knew that we always build into each other's lives, “life-to-life and as we got to know other people and shared in their lives, we ended up talking about what was important to us—just as everyone does. What was “important to us” was our relationship to the Lord, our eternal destiny which is decided by whether we have trusted Christ as Savior or not; what the Scripture teaches us as to “how then should we live?” And how a Biblical world-and-life-view deals with and meets the problems of life. Those and our children were the most important things in life to us so those are the things we talked about whether we were having a dinner together or playing bridge or going for a walk with other people.
Minnie was so hospitable that her Bible professor many years later told her that he was sure that one of her main “spiritual gifts” from God was the “gift of hospitality.” Many, many people who have known her would agree. Many years later in her little book, “Breaking Bread Together,” she wrote these words about how we are to be “given to hospitality.” She quoted Galatians 6:10 “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.”
And she remembered the words of the Lord Jesus, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.” Matthew 25:40 “From my mother,” she wrote, “I learned that God wanted us to be hospitable. She always talked about the fact that what we did for others was like doing it for Jesus. As I grew up, it was natural to want to fix meals for people, so this is a great heritage and something I want to pass along to my children and grandchildren.” . . .
“The greeting at the door is important. You are inviting someone to enter your home. Friends may be from the work place, your church, or total strangers such as visiting speakers or missionaries, first-time visitors at church, children's friends, or relatives. As you open the door, make the greeting warm and friendly. As you close the door, in a sense you are closing out the outside world—problems and all—and now you want to share your life with your guests.”
“We show hospitality in different ways and for different reasons. Sometimes we are hospitable to meet needs in someone's life. For example, someone who wants to attend a conference but cannot afford the hotel and food cost. Could you host them?”
“A family member needs to be near a hospital when someone is sick or injured. When one of the students at JBU was in a serious car accident, her parents stayed with us for 6 weeks so they could visit her everyday in the hospital.”
“Missionaries traveling to visit churches might need a few days of rest.” Every example she gave in those paragraphs comes exactly out of our lives. We've done them all.
“Unexpected visitors can be good training for your children. Mine learned to prepare their room for guests in a hurry and to be willing to sleep in sleeping bags in the living room or in Dad's study. We never had a guest room but we had many house guests. 'Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained
angels unawares.' Hebrews 13:1-2”
Minnie gave several suggestions that we used to encourage dinner conversation, especially if everyone was already a Christian or a “seeker.” When I invited people from our Sunday School class for dinner, she wrote, “After dinner we asked each person to share how he/she came to know the Lord and if there was any special concern he or she would like to
mention. Those were very good times of fellowship and we all got to know each other much better.” “Other times we simply ask people to tell us something about themselves or anything else that was on their mind. A lot of very good discussions followed.” (“Breaking Bread Together,” pages 5-9)
She's talking about an important part of our “way of life” or “life style,” not only on Freckles Road, but everywhere we lived. After all, we are to be “given to hospitality.” And when I have been describing those “happy years” on Freckles Road, that is not to say that there weren’t troubles and trials during that time and everywhere else we lived. That’s the stuff life is made of. Jesus promised it: “In the world you shall have tribulation,” He told the disciples and us, “but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” And He overcomes our problems, too. Look to Him for the wisdom and strength you need to face life's many problems and suffering. We were already living on Freckles Road when Jon almost died of
salmonella during that very, very difficult “Christmas holiday” period of 1963.
Tell you another story about Minnie and God’s provision at that time. Once the fever broke and a turn-around came and Jon began improving in the hospital, we did not know how much longer he would need to stay there. And it was almost time for me to return to my teaching assignment. But we only had one car at the time–that station wagon you saw in the picture of Jon and Minnie going to City College in 1964.
Problem! Minnie didn’t know how to drive and she didn’t have a driver’s license! How was she going to get to the hospital to see Jon while I was at work? If she took me to school (or if I found a fellow teacher to pick me up at home and take me home) she could have the car to go see Jon while the children were at school. It turned out that he went home the Friday before I returned to work on Monday, but we didn't know that was what was going to
happen. So Minnie practiced her driving some more and we made plans for her to take her driving test at the one driver's license location that did not require parallel parking because she had never been able to master that skill.
Well, we got to the testing location and took the number to wait our turn and sat there observing others taking the driving test when, to our dismay, we noticed that they were all having to parallel park, just the same as at the other locations. We had a few minutes left to wait, so I quickly sketched and explained to Minnie how she must park the car. And it was more difficult because it was our long Ford station wagon. She knew a lot was riding on whether she could get her license or not and we prayed about it together. When the examiner came, of course I had to leave the car and I watched from the sidewalk. The first thing he required her to do was parallel park between two poles in the examining area. I watched as she pulled up to just exactly the right spot and then very slowly and carefully backed the station wagon into the right spot and straightened it out. After that everything else in the test went very smoothly. And ever after she either never tried or never was able to parallel park again! One exception: I do remember one time many years later she actually did parallel park and was laughing with me when she came home to tell me.
That “test” was just another good example of God helping us meet the tests of life—small as well as large.
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